


The Queen & I

by LLReid



Category: Love & Legends (Visual Novel), Reigning Passions (Visual Novel)
Genre: Canon LGBTQ Character, F/F, I HC that L&L and RP are in the same universe, Its missing Xenia hours, LGBTQ Female Character, Romantic Fluff, Royalty, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26075989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Inspired by; Lettre à élise by Efisio Cross.~~~~~The overwhelming colours of the evening moved around Xenia as she chased her girlfriend beneath the arches made almost entirely of yellow roses and ivy, their laughter floating on the breeze. The gardens glowed. The mixture of golden, red, and green leaves flashed by, each one blazing like sparks caught in the updraft of a fire. A scarlet carpet unrolled before them, rich and flawless velvet over the marble mosaicked paths. Rising from the freshly trimmed grass, the brown, tangled roots breathed a bluish mist that reduced the farthest trees' trunks to ghostly silhouettes, yet left their foliage's luminous hues untouched.The queen’s long teal dress made entirely out of silk spiralled out behind her as she ran, her long flame coloured hair sparkling in a multitude of coppery hues beneath her diamond tiara. Every shadow and fleck of setting sun swayed, dipped, and rolled across the private gardens the way a room did after one too many cocktails, and entwined through it all, the colliding scents of the city; Autumn’s smokey wood fire and Spring’s floral cherry blossom, Winter’s icy snowmelt and Sumer’s fresh fruits.
Relationships: Xenia of the Autumn/Lyrei Ararieth, Xenia/Main Character (Reigning Passions)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 59





	The Queen & I

Far below the beautifully landscaped palace gardens that crowned Altadellys ships blanketed the glittering waters of the Summer Quarter’s docks. Elaborately carved wooden vessels of all shapes and sizes, painted in various pallets of patriotic vibrant hues floated on the crystal clear waves that reflected the setting sun, their sails billowing in the gentle breeze. Dozens of foreign emblems marked the fabric on their gilded masts and flanks, but over them all, teal and golden embroidered banners with Queen Lyrei’s symbol of the hummingbird had been hung proudly. They glittered like aquamarine gemstones against the flame coloured sunset, symbolising a new golden age of foreign relations and prosperity in Lysende that the old council of nobility could only ever dream of ushering in. 

The overwhelming colours of the evening moved around Xenia as she chased her girlfriend beneath the arches made almost entirely of yellow roses and ivy, their laughter floating on the breeze. The gardens glowed. The mixture of golden, red, and green leaves flashed by, each one blazing like sparks caught in the updraft of a fire. A scarlet carpet unrolled before them, rich and flawless velvet over the marble mosaicked paths. Rising from the freshly trimmed grass, the brown, tangled roots breathed a bluish mist that reduced the farthest trees' trunks to ghostly silhouettes, yet left their foliage's luminous hues untouched. Vivid moss speckled the branches like tarnished copper. The crisp spice of pine sap infused the air over a musty perfume of leaves. 

Music from the palace’s ornate ballroom, where her majesty’s orchestra were rehearsing, echoed outside through the large open doors made entirely of brightly coloured stained glass. The song was rich and slow; it made Xenia want to shed her heavy dress for a lighter one, to dance on the grass, to splash in the fountains, to taste every piece of fruit, drink every beam of sunlight. It made her feel old and young, wise and naïve, curious and satisfied. This was peace. This was everything right and beautiful and good that the world had to offer. The music swelled through the open gardens, deep and sonorous and lilting. It was a song full of hope and dreams and love and every good thing that inspired people to feel, that made them human. It was a song to break the world. It was a song to remake it again — a tune more than fit to grace the halls of the queen’s court.

The queen’s long teal dress made entirely out of silk spiralled out behind her as she ran, her long flame coloured hair sparkling in a multitude of coppery hues beneath her diamond tiara. Every shadow and fleck of setting sun swayed, dipped, and rolled across the private gardens the way a room did after one too many cocktails, and entwined through it all, the colliding scents of the city; Autumn’s smokey wood fire and Spring’s floral cherry blossom, Winter’s icy snowmelt and Sumer’s fresh fruits. At turns sickly sweet and also bitter, and all of it dizzying. From the highest garden that crowned the floating city, Altadellys was like something out of a dream or a brightly coloured oil painting.

Under Queen Lyrei’s rule, Lysende had become a land where even the poorest villagers in The Wilds were fed, housed, and clothed. A kingdom where everyone was protected, where everyone was accepted and given ample opportunities to prosper. The divisions of the past were over. It had taken Lyrei less than a span to accomplish what the old nobility couldn’t do in a century — to earn the love and respect of her people and her peers ruling foreign kingdoms over seas. Unlike those who had ruled before her, she was not weak. She was not jaded. She was not indecisive. She was strong. Fierce. Capable beyond measure. Lyrei wasn’t a wielder of chains; she was a breaker of them.

The Queen squealed with delight as Xenia finally caught up to her, wrapping her arms around her slender waist and whisking her off of her feet in the way that only she could without being immediately impaled on the pointy end of one of Ruelle’s daggers. Sometimes she forgot how small she was, because her bravery loomed so large in her mind and she took up so much space in her heart. The Mistress of Spies didn’t even attempt to conceal her joy as she pressed a series of kisses against her lover’s jaw and snatched back the set of lethally poisoned hairpins she had stolen from her desk before bolting in a rather unconventional bid to distract her from her daily workload.

If anyone else had dared pull such a stunt, she might’ve actually been irritated. Ink and parchment flowed through her veins. The magic of the Great Libraries lived in her very bones. They were a part of her, and she a part of them... it was what made her so good at her job. She could lose herself quite easily in her duty, almost too easily.

“Would you like to explain to me what that was all about?,” she smirked, returning Lyrei to her feet in the alcove that’s overlooked the city at the end of the long marble tunnel of arches they’d ran through. They were both giddy with the floral scented evening air, burning like the white-hot sun setting over the horizon. Everything smelled wet and feral like it did before a summer thunderstorm that would clear the air, and deep down they both wanted to continue running, swift and eager, beyond the edge of what they could see. “I have a lot of work to be doing before tomorrow evenings ball. I am to feed you information that will help you secure foreign alliances—“

“You’re to do all the work and I’m to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.”

Xenia snorted and fixed the queen with a look. She found a dash of insolence to be quite enjoyable from time to time, and affection pulsed through her. Love had enveloped her, twining her heart with Lyrei’s as snugly as the ivy climbing the garden wall. “There are multiple foreign heirs staying in your palace right now and you are running an entire nation singlehandedly. You are hardly idling.”

In celebration of her twenty-fourth birthday, The Queen of Rovdyr had sent a spans worth of mulled winter wine, seven priests, and her only son to negotiate trade — who had a gift for growth magic was unsurpassed in all of Rovdyr. The King of the Oscen had sent the famed military strategist Crown Prince Asa to negotiate trade deals, and barrels upon barrels of uncut sapphires, amethysts, and rubies as a gift for the Queen. Even the famed immortal Elven Queen Ishara Idreis from a strange war torn land half a world away had sent a golden tiara embossed with emeralds, four dragon eggs, Crown Princess Iraia to negotiate trade and a military alliance, and her sibling Imhon to train a new line of dragon masters in Lysende. 

The palace was crowded at the best of times and Lyrei was quite literally the busiest woman in the kingdom, but even with her workload temporarily increased she somehow still managed to wind up bored after she’d completed her daily tasks. The persona she dawned when doing her duty was a woman who went through this world as if nothing touched her, as if no one could reach her, as though she was always focused on something bigger and better and more important that she was not going to tell anyone a single thing about. It charmed people, made her seem like something otherworldly and entirely untouchable. How she made people see her wasn’t necessarily how she really was. No matter what she was doing, everyone in the floating city waited and watched her with an indrawn breath, salivating for the first news of a queen unlike any the world had known before. It was the most maddening thing, as far as Xenia was concerned.

“Being queen is maintaining an illusion. Meeting people’s expectations will not fill my entire day,” Lyrei scoffed. “Charming the foreign royals is exhausting, as everyone besides Crown Princess Iraia is really rather dull.”

She snorted. “I noticed.”

“All I have to do to win their favour is compliment their clothes, Xenia. You’d think they’d at least try to be difficult to charm!”

“You can be very charming. You charmed me, didn’t you?” 

The queen rolled her eyes and smiled softly. “Do not expect others to share your depraved tastes.”

“Tomorrow night is a night to turn heads. Make them remember Lysende. Make sure they never forget,” Xenia said whilst smoothing her dress. She seemed to be made of the darkest hours of the night. She wore it like a gown, draped over skin that shimmered in the setting sun. “I have a lot to prove. I have to prove myself worthy of being your lover, Spy Master, and having the ear of a queen." 

Xenia had never admitted to anyone but Lyrei and a few of her most loyal spiders how it felt terrible to be feared — she pretended she enjoyed it and manipulated people’s fear of her to her every whim, but it was exhausting. And worst of all, she couldn’t blame anyone for it. She was something different and strange, with powers and strengths not even the queen herself could claim. She was all frayed wires and glitching machines, still learning herself and her abilities. Who knew what she might become if she managed to get people to stop fearing her as much as they did?

“More important, you have her heart." She took a step forward and lowered her voice. "And, most important, you are a wonderful thing to behold in your own right. You have nothing to prove to anyone. For nothing, not the sun, not the rain, not even the brightest star in the darkest sky, could begin to compare to the wonder of you.”

Xenia huffed in amusement as Lyrei stepped towards her. She’d been so consumed in her joy when the queen had burst into her office and robbed her in broad daylight that she hadn’t even noticed that there was an ornate looking diamond and amethyst necklace in her left hand. The jewels sparkled vibrantly as they captured the light of the setting sun — it was the most beautiful piece of jewellery Xenia had ever seen. 

“Let me guess, it was a gift from a royal house in an attempt to win your favour. Most likely Winter... or perhaps Spring.”

“No,” Lyrei replied as she fastened it around Xenia’s neck. “Since you will officially be my date to tomorrow nights ball and your birthday is also tomorrow, I wanted to surprise you with something nice. I know you said you didn’t want any birthday gifts, and I respect you too much to ignore you... which is why I’m giving it to you today. You said absolutely nothing about not spoiling you the day before your birthday.”

Xenia’s jaw dropped and her eyes darted down to the necklace. “This... is for me?”

“Indeed it is. I had it made with some of the jewels the Oscen sent to me.” Lyrei paused. “You like it, right?”

“I love it,” Xenia breathed as her fingertips grazed the jewels now hanging around her neck. “I told you that amethysts were my favourite only once and that was almost an entire span ago. I can’t believe you remembered.”

In the twelve spans that had followed Valerian’s death before finding Lyrei, Xenia had despised her own birthday with a burning passion. On her birthday, the memories had hung over her like a weight. Each was light enough to bear on its own, but combined, they could make it difficult to even walk up the stairs. But yet, she wouldn't trade them away for anything. She’d managed to heal enough to realise that their existence made this palace, this life, a place she had fought for and won. A place where she now felt like she truly belonged. Because of Lyrei she was alive in a way she had never been since losing Val, in a world that no longer felt stale but instead crackled with breathless promise.

Love was fragile. And loving someone like Xenia was near impossible. Like holding something shattered through a raging sandstorm. Lyrei had figured out if she wanted her to love her, it was her job to help shelter her from that storm… and make certain that storm would never become her.

If she was a storm, Xenia would lie down and rest in her rain. If she was a river, she would drink from her currents. If she was a poem, she would never cease to read her. She had adored the barmaid she once was, and she loved the queen she had become — who had risen for the queens of the nations past, and for the queens yet to come.

“I always remember.”

“No one listens to me as you do.” Lyrei’s expression turned quizzical. “You don’t wait to speak,” Xenia clarified. “You truly listen.” 

“Only to you,” Lyrei replied gently.

She smiled. “You are — remarkable. Every day, I think I am going to be surprised by how remarkable you are, but I am not. Because this is what it means to be you. It means knowing no bounds. Being limitless in all that you do.”

Without another word she pulled Lyrei into her embrace and pressed her lips against hers. When she wound her fingers in the glittering strands of her hair to draw her body against hers even further, she stilled for breath, and Xenia knew, as Lyrei knew, that they were lost. Lost forever. In this kiss. This kiss that had changed everything. She couldn’t help but smile against her, and she smiled a smile to shame the sun, because they were two parts of a whole. Lyrei did not belong to her. And she did not belong to Lyrei, despite her being her sovereign. It was never about belonging to someone. It was about belonging together.

“How does it feel?,” Lyrei murmured. “To be stuck in a fairytale?”

In her ear, she whispered, “how does it feel to be one?”

“I love you,” Lyrei said, lifting her head to hers. She placed a hand against her cheek. “Beyond words.”

“I love you, too,” Xenia breathed. The stars could fall and the moon could crash from the heavens, and she would not care because she was so happy. “I love you, wholly. I love you, eternally. I love you so dearly it frightens me. I fear I could not live without you. I could see your face every morning upon waking for a thousand spans and still look forward to the next as though it were the first.”

“I'm going to kiss you now,” Lyrei whispered.

“I was hoping you would say that,” she whispered back, and they both cracked a smile. 

“Xenia,” the queen said, and she could feel her body heat humming off her. “What would I do without you?”

She shivered as one word travelled through her. “Rule.”

She took her lips on hers once again and kissed her until nothing at all existed between them. Nothing but shared breaths and unspoken promises and one unshakable truth. They wouldn't live happily ever after — because neither of them believed in such nonsense — despite the fact that they were involved in a fairytale romance. They both had a long, bold adventure ahead of them, that would be filled with love and a great deal to look forward to at last. And the infinite captivated Xenia because it allowed her to believe all things were finally possible. That a love as true as theirs could last beyond time. 

She would stay by Lyrei’s side until the fire in the sun grew cold and the light of the moon was no more. Until time blotted out the stars themselves.

~ fin.


End file.
